Chapter 48: The Bottle Ghost Girl

The candle inside the room burned like a speck of fire; outside, the night was deep and boundless, as if something had let out a few regretful smacking sounds, then slipped away silently.

Only then did the stepmother exhale, opening her palm to recall the bamboo dragonfly she had sent out to scout.

She had released five, but only three returned.

The two that didn’t return weren’t destroyed by Old Qian.

Night is always full of danger. If the stepmother had slackened even slightly just now, this battle would not have ended so easily.

Lin Wanmo sensed three hidden wills watching from the shadows.

Xu Yuan checked his three-eyed firelock; the secret explosive powder was meant for the artisan-crafted bronze cannon, and after three shots, it had grown overheated.

Xu Yuan winced—after replacing the powder, this artisan-made device would grow even more powerful, but its lifespan would be drastically shortened.

He set the pistol aside for now and began searching Old Qian’s corpse—Lin Wanmo saw him swiftly rummaging through Old Qian’s pouch and pulling out dozens of copper coins, and understood why this boy had brought back so much money.

“This old bastard is dirt poor!” Xu Yuan grumbled.

He turned Old Qian inside out—and found only a few dozen copper coins!

Lin Wanmo glanced at the corpse and said, “He isn’t old at all—no more than thirty-five. The old, frail appearance you see is because he’s overexposed to yin spirits. Even a spirit cultivator can’t do this without restraint.”

Old Qian was obsessed with soul-refining, lost in it, so his spirit cultivation advanced rapidly, earning him the master’s favor.

But his body was ruined—he wouldn’t live five more years even if Xu Yuan hadn’t killed him.

The master gave him plenty of money, but he spent it all on soul-refining research; he owned nothing else and lived only for bare sustenance.

Xu Yuan searched him again and found a small booklet.

Opening it, he saw it recorded all of Old Qian’s cultivation insights—it was his notebook, where he jotted down every experiment’s results and new ideas as they came.

If a spirit cultivator obtained this, they could easily become a second “Old Qian.”

And they wouldn’t have to pay the price of a ruined body, like Old Qian did.

For a spirit cultivator, it was priceless.

But for Xu Yuan and the stepmother, it held little use.

Three pages of the booklet specifically recorded several spirit cultivation methods, one of which was called “Spirit Skin Technique,” using one’s own “true spirit” to greatly enhance the defensive power of the skin.

The foundation of spirit cultivation is strengthening one’s own “true spirit.”

Xu Yuan didn’t know whether Old Qian had used the “Spirit Skin Technique” at the last moment—even if he had, it wouldn’t have withstood three shots.

The stepmother flipped through the booklet and handed it back to Xu Yuan: “Put it away for now. If you meet a friendly spirit cultivator later, you can sell it for a good price.”

Old Qian had nothing else on him—his only remaining assets were these bottles and jars.

Only then did Xu Yuan remember he had captured a “bottle ghost” from Qiao Ziaang’s study and left it untouched in the room.

Xu Yuan opened a clay jar—inside, a piercing shriek rang out, stabbing straight into the soul; a cloud of black sand mist surged forth, coalescing in the room into a terrifying spirit with a human body and a scorpion tail.

Its two eyes glowed crimson, its lips curled back to reveal four jet-black fangs, dripping greedy saliva.

It was about to unleash its fury when it saw a short sword, its surface ablaze with belly-fire, already waiting right before its brow.

This was an eighth-rank “xiao ghost”—a vengeful soul that died violently in the mountains, fused with primitive, non-sentient mountain spirits to form a grotesque entity.

Feeling the terrifying heat before its brow, it knew that if that blade pierced in, it couldn’t withstand it.

So the xiao ghost obediently shrank its form, puffed into a cloud of sand mist, and slipped back into the jar.

It even flicked out a tiny tail of sand mist to seal the lid itself.

Xu Yuan nodded in satisfaction: “This one knows its place.”

Then Xu Yuan opened another jar.

This jar was the largest and most “refined” among all the bottles and jars Old Qian had brought.

It was a blue-and-white porcelain jar, about three feet tall.

Xu Yuan lifted the lid—and a little girl’s head suddenly reached out from inside!

Lin Wanmo glanced into the jar and cursed: “This man deserves to die ten times over!”

The girl’s limbs had been chopped off and forcibly stuffed into the jar. Old Qian’s method differed from the usual “bottle fairy” tricks of the martial world.

After being stuffed into the jar and fed for a while, the girl suffered unbearable agony—then Old Qian poured in all kinds of poisonous insects.

These insects gnawed at the girl’s body day and night.

She couldn’t escape, couldn’t hide—until her body was completely devoured, and she died a horrific death inside the jar.

Old Qian then sealed the jar with secret methods, fusing the girl’s vengeful soul with countless poisonous insect spirits!

Who knew whose beloved daughter had suffered such a fate, tormented like this?

This “bottle ghost girl” radiated overwhelming resentment and carried deadly poison—she was Old Qian’s most powerful yin soldier.

As soon as the bottle ghost girl showed her head, her eyes dripped blood, her mouth opened wide with fangs, and she lunged at Xu Yuan.

Behind the girl’s head grew a long, serpentine neck!

Xu Yuan forced her back with belly-fire, sealed the lid, and didn’t know how to handle this yin artifact.

Lin Wanmo said, “Refine her. Help her transcend. Her fragmented soul endures the daily gnawing of insect spirits—this is… too cruel.”

Xu Yuan nodded, took a deep breath, twisted his belly-fire into a thin thread, pried open the lid slightly, and sent the fire inside.

After a moment, he reopened the lid—thin wisps of blue smoke rose from within.

The smoke curled and drifted, then slowly dissipated.

Its form gave off a sense of profound relief, as if freed.

Xu Yuan sighed inwardly, yet his mood wasn’t lightened.

Xu Yuan opened all the remaining jars—they contained various yin spirits and soldiers, eleven in total.

The stepmother pushed the clay jars toward Xu Yuan: “Feed on them.”

Xu Yuan blinked: “All of them?”

“All of them!” Lin Wanmo wished he could go out and capture even more to feed Xu Yuan, refining them into external elixirs to massively strengthen his power.

When this boy dashed out just now, Lin Wanmo knew he would never be “well-behaved” again.

If his strength wasn’t sufficient, the stepmother truly couldn’t rest easy.

But among these yin soldiers were several disgusting things like “corpse-water monsters,” and Xu Yuan couldn’t bring himself to eat them.

Lin Wanmo didn’t force him—instead, he sat beneath Xu Huanyang’s spirit tablet, wiping away tears that may or may not have been there, sobbing pitifully: “Old Xu, you’ve been gone only a few days, and the child already disobeys me. What’s the point of me living? I’ll join you now…”

Xu Yuan’s temple veins throbbed—this is going too far.

You’re acting convincingly—no wonder you’re the proprietor of an old opera stage.

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(End of Chapter)